Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Between The Idea And Work - Course Of Musical Data Processing

If musical information processing is indispensable us so much today, it is that it gradually created tools which are radically modifying the mode of thought the music. However, its history is short. It merges with the development of numerical technologies: computers, initially, accompanied by creative activity by the linguistic communications symbolical intended for the programming, then with a whole troop of innovations in numerical technology. Enough early in its history, information processing will be shown sufficiently mature to suit concerns of all kinds, energy of accounting to scientific research, while passing naturally by what involvements us, artistic creation.

And it is undoubtedly there that it is necessary to separate what originates from information processing itself, and what belongs rather to the broader human race of numerical technology. The music amply pulls from these two Fields its new resources. However, since the field of the sound is converted today into audio numerical, the differentiation is essential. Musical information processing is born from the meeting of the musical concerns and the environment resulting from numerical engineerings and the specificity of the computer, on the 1 hand, and of the scientific Fields which clear up its research topics. If the musical composition looks there in good place, practically all the other activities of the music are establish there. And musical research partly covers the land cleared by information processing, acoustics, the treatment of the signal, even cognitive psychology: thus musical information processing is at the centre of respective musical, scientific and technical fields.

But it is the resort to the specific parts of the information processing which qualifies its step. New conceptual tools are unceasingly provided by the unreal intelligence, which are concretized by linguistic communications such as as Lisp or Prolog. They are set at once at the musicologist aid or abstracting service to the composition. Research in systems existent clip and on the interfaces synergistic brands it possible to gestate new connexions between the musician and the electronic universe.

Great phases of musical information processing

With the beginning of musical information processing, 1 discoveries two types of activities, independent one of the other. If these activities prudent today, it is in another mode that the original vision which caused their birth could enable to foresee. These two types of activities are: the musical composition, and production of the sound. In both cases, the industry of the desired consequence is ensured by the computer. These two types of activities are appreciably contemporary. The first serious diagnostic tests of musical composition per computing machine travel back to 1956: it is on this day of the month that Lejaren Hiller calculated a divider using regulations encodes in the word form of algorithmic rules on the computing machine Illiac Iodine of the university of Illinois. It is about Illiac Suite for String Quartet, whose three motions are carried out this twelvemonth by the twine four WQXR. In a celebrated structure, published in 1959 and which back ups the statute title of "Experimental Music-Composition with twelvemonth Electronic Computer", Lejaren Hiller explicates in item the processes that it applied to the Illiac computing machine in order to bring forth the divider of his twine quartet.

To turn up this period, it is as into 1956 as Toilet Mary McCarthy forged the term of unreal intelligence. One twelvemonth later, max Mathews, research worker at the labs of the Bell Telephone, in the New Jersey, a first numerical computing machine programmer of synthesis of the sound for the computer IBM 704 writes. Known today under the name of Music I, it is the first of a great household of acoustic compilers; a psychologist, Newman Guttman, bring forths first a 1 15 secs continuance study, In the Silver Scale. It is as into 1957 as the four motions of the Continuance Illiac for String Four of Lejaren Hiller are published; the same twelvemonth is born the crude version from the celebrated linguistic communication of FORTRAN programme (FORmula TRANslator). Let us observe that during the creative activity of the work of Hiller by the twine four WQXR, it is max Mathews which organized a recording, which gave place, thereafter, with the publication of this recording in a phonograph record carried out in 1960 by the Bell Laboratories, and entitled Music from Mathematics: even if the ways traced by these two discoverers are independent, it is not known as that they did not cross…

From these two almost modern-day events, the development will continue, gradually, in the traced directions: the composition and production of the sound. We will see low the courses of study of them. But a 3rd manner is not long in appearing: it is born from the same observation that had made Hiller: the computing machine is above all, at that time, a formidable calculating machine. Moreover, the English term of selected computing machine indicated, before the visual aspect of these machines, the employees charged to run calculations. But at the same time, with a spot of fear, one spoke readily at the clip of electronic brains. An creative person could not attack the computing machine not without a certain emotion, which explicates without any uncertainty the attractive force sometimes terrific that information processing will exercise on the people of the followers decades. But they are two men of science who are at the beginning of these experiments: Hiller practiced chemistry, while Mathews was an already celebrated researcher. It is undoubtedly what explicates singular methodological analyses that they reflect in place, each 1 on their side, and with completely independent aims.

With the Bell laboratories, max Mathews, on his side, written in 1957 a first numerical programmed of synthesis of the sound for the computing machine IBM 704, equipped with 4096 words of memory. Known today under the name of Music I, it is the first of a great family. The programme Music three (1960) introduced the conception of instrument modular. The theoretical account imagined by max Mathews is inspired more than than one equipment of research lab or an electronic studio of music that by an acoustic stringed-instrument trade. The programme offerings a scope of independent faculties (Unit Generators), in complaint each 1 of an simple function: oscillator with word form of programmable wave, adder of signals, multiplier, generator of envelopes and random signals, etc… The instrumentalist constructs a "instrument" by connecting a choice of faculties between them. The signalings produced by the oscillators or the generators are led towards other faculties there to be modified or mixed. Respective instruments can be joined together within a "orchestra", each instrument having its ain identity. Contrary to what happens in the stuff universe, it there not of bounds to the figure of faculties usable simultaneously, except perhaps the memory of the computer. The consequence of the arrangement of the instrument is the progressive computation of the sound in the word form of a sequence of Numbers which, set stop to end, stand for a complex sound wave. These Numbers are called "samples". Today, the figure of samples representing one 2nd of its was established to 44 100 per transmission channel for the applications general public, and to 48 000 for the professional field.

Because of relative awkwardness of the machines and designing weight to be carried out, clip set to bring forth the sound moving ridge is quite higher than the continuance of the sounds; the operation of these programmes is known as "in differed time". With the origin, the sound moving ridges calculated in numerical word form were stored on a numerical tape progressively proceeding end of an arithmetic unit of measurement of samples. This manner of production of the sound is called "direct synthesis". Thus makes for itself a "file of sound"; once completed, the instrumentalist phone calls upon a 2nd program, charged reading the register of sound in existent clip and with sending the samples towards a digital-to-analog converter, which is connected to an amplifier and loudspeakers.

To trip the orchestra, the instrumentalist must compose a "partition", in which all the parametric quantities claimed by the faculties of the instrument are specified. This divider is presented in the word form of a listing of Numbers or telegraphy codes, each "note" or a each event being the topic of a peculiar list. These listings are ordered in time.

But to stipulate each parametric quantity is a hard task, more than especially as the instrumentalists are not trained to give values measured to sound dimensions which they handle. To struggle against this obstacle, of the linguistic communications of aid to the authorship of dividers were conceived; most known is the Mark programme of Leland Ian Smith (1972). Mark is not an automatic programme of composition: it do it possible to stipulate the parametric quantities using footing resulting from the musical pattern (heights, nuances, durations), automatically to cipher alterations of pacing or nuances, and even to supplement subdivisions with short letters corresponding to a flight given by the type-setter. The theoretical account instrument-partition was firmly established with the reaching of Music four (1962). This programme were born from many alternatives, of which some be indeed still today. Among these misadventures, allow us cite Music 4BF (1966-67), there is nowadays a version for Mackintosh (Music 4C, 1989), and especially Music 360 of Barry Vercoe (1968); this descendent of Music four have as a feature to be presented in the word form of a true scheduling language, which undoubtedly explicates why it became today with C-Music the acoustic encyclopedist more used. It was initially adapted to minicomputer PDP-11 from DIGITAL in 1973, then, entirely rewritten in linguistic communication Degree Centigrade in 1985, it took the name of C-Sound, and was quickly adapted to all sorts of data-processing platforms, including the micro-computers like Atari, Mackintosh and IBM. In 1969 Music Volt appears, a programme which is conceived to ease the musical scheduling of the instruments and the partitions; nowadays, Music Volt is still largely employed, generally in the word form of the version that in made Richard Moore, C-Music (1980).

The computing machine was also an unquestionable success in a strongly bad field, the musicologists analysis. With the eyes of the public interested at the beginning of the Sixties, information processing, still rather cryptic and inaccessible, showed the possibility for unusual musical work; in composition, in musicology and finally, limited to the labs Bell, production of sound. A great musical turbulence of this decennary was to come up from the human race of electronics, with the visual aspect into 1964 of the synthesists modular, known as "analogical" since they make not incorporate numerical electronics. Conceived independently by Paolo Ketoff (Rome), Henry Martin Robert Moog and Donald Buchla (the United States), the synthesists convey the response to the technological aspirations of many musicians, especially after the popular success of the phonograph record Switched one Johann Sebastian Bach of Bruno Walter Carlos who truly made cognize these instruments near a big audience. During this time, the programme of Mathews cognizes versions on other sites, such as as the universities of New York, Princeton or Stanford.

Another application of the computing machine looks with the piloting of analogical instruments. The machine bring forths signalings with slow fluctuation which modify the accommodations of devices of studio: frequence of oscillators, net income of amplifiers, cut-off frequencies of filters. The first illustration of this system which one name calling "hybrid synthesis" was established in 1970 in Elektron Musik Studio of Stockholm, foundation independent since 1969, financed by the Royal Academy of Music, and placed under the way of Canute Wiggen. A computing machine PDP 15/40 controlled twenty-four generators of frequence there, a generator of achromatic vibration, two 3rd filters of octave, modulators: out of ring, of amplitude and reverberations. The originality of the system of Capital Of Sweden put in an extremely ergonomic operator console, with which the type-setter could stipulate the parametric quantities of synthesis by sweeping a panel of figs using a metallic element brochette. Another studio is to be quoted: that of Simon Simon Peter Zinovieff in Greater London (1969), placed under the control of a minicomputer DIGITAL PDP 8 for which Peter Grogono wrote the linguistic communication of Musys piloting.

Another singular realisation is the system Groove (Generated Realtime Operations One Equipment Voltage-controlled, Calcium 1969) conceived at the Bell labs by max Mathews and Richard Moore. Groove is an instrument intended for the control of parametric quantities of reading of a device of synthesis. In this direction, it put the musician more close to the put of a leader that to a type-setter Oregon an instrumentalist, although one can see that the electronic type-setter of music must often place himself in place of chief, by directly interpreting the music which is made up.

It is the center of the Seventies which tags the passage towards an grim broadening from now on from the life of musical information processing, with the visual aspect of the microprocessor. A data-processing stringed-instrument trade will go gradually possible with the designing of complete computing machines on an incorporate circuit: microprocessors. It will also be necessary that the interface with the user improves, and that the poke card game by a more than synergistic manner of input signals are replaced: it will be the keyboard and the cathode beam tubing which will transport it.

The rule of the loanblend synthesis continued to be applied throughout the Seventies, before being supplanted definitively by the numerical synthesists at the dawning of the Eighties. The American company Intel marketplaces since 1971 the first microprocessor, the electrical circuit 4004, which let the designing of echt illumination computers, the microcomputers: Intellec 8 (conceived starting from microprocessor 8008 of 1972), Apple I, Altair (1975), gathered soon under the name of micro-computers.

The experimentation musical of the Art Group and Data processing of Vincennes (GAIV) exemplify this clip of passage well. This team, founded to the university of City Of Light 8 by Saint Patrick Greussay and a squad of people and architects, known for the publication of a bulletin diffusing the research undertakings in most recent fine art and information processing, entrusted to the type-setter Giuseppe Englert the musical coordination of her activities. It is Intellec 8, personal computing machine with words of eight bits, ordered by a paper tape and a keyboard, which was used with the compositionally activities and as research on musical formalization; English Language synthesists EMS-VCS3 were controlled by the microcomputer, via digital-to-analog converters charged to supply powerfulness of order in exchange of the binary star information calculated by synergistic programs.

The 2nd consequence of the reaching of the personal computer was the designing of the "mixed synthesis", synthesists numerical, echt computing machines adapted to the computation of the sound moving ridge in existent times, placed under the control of a computer. From 2nd one-half of the Seventies look respective accomplishments of this type; we will reserve work of Jesse James Beauchamp, Jean-François Allouis, William Buxton, inter alia, like those of Simon Peter Samson (synthesizer of Systems Concept, conceived for the research centre -- CCRMA -- university of Stanford), Synclavier Delaware New England DIGITAL Corporation, conceived by Syd Alicia Alonso and Cameron Mother Jones under the urge of the type-setter Jon Appleton, design, under the urge of Luciano Berio, of a bench of oscillators in Napoli by Giuseppe di Giugno, who continued his work in Ircam (series 4A, 4B, 4C and 4X) under the way of Capital Of South Dakota Boulez; more than recently, Fly 30 of the Center of recherché musical of Rome. Let us observe that with the 4X of Ircam (1980), the term of synthesist disappears, replaced by that of numerical processor of signal, which undoubtedly travels the speech pattern on the general information of the machine.

The industry of the electronic instrument makes not take a long clip to accommodate to these new developments. The first phase consisted in introducing microprocessors inside analogical synthesists (Prophet synthesists of the house Sequential Circuits), charged to command the faculties ordered in tension; it is still of the "hybrid synthesis". The 2nd phase follows soon: it dwells in designing echt entirely numerical musical instruments. It is the noticed reaching of Synclavier II, then of Fairlight.

The industrial field is today initially made up by the marketplace of the synthesists and the processors of the sound, and by the software system which do it possible to work them. Today, all the synthesists are numerical, and necessarily ran into the Midi standard. The field of the synthesists is double: on the 1 manus apparatuses, often provided with a keyboard, which suggest a pick of preprogrammed sounds which one can change certain parametric quantities by an simple procedure of programming; in addition, the machines which are intended to reproduce sounds beforehand recorded and memorized, or stored on mass memory: samplers, or "samplers".

It should be noted that all these engineerings go accessible to the private musician, within the model of what is called commonly the "personal studio" (home studio).

But these machines, and a fortiori the personal studio make not work without adapted software: the sequenators control the executing of a piece directly starting from a computer, the editors of sound are intended for the treatment, the assembly and the mixing of sound sequences. Programs do it possible to compose a partition, which from now on is usually employed by the musical edition. Lastly, the machines can also be placed under the control of supplementary programs to the composition.

The most original fictional character of the modern-day data-processing stringed-instrument trade is the "workstation". To gestate a workstation dwells in assemblage programmes of assorted nature, intended for the analysis or the synthesis of the sound, the control of the sound or the composition. These programmes are integrated within data-processing A "environment" organized around a computing machine and of its peripherals, intended for the treatment of the sound on line. It is the lawsuit of the plug-in charts which, coupled to a software, do it possible to read "files of sound" stored on a disc, in exchange of an order, coming for illustration from a Midi source. This system, if new that it did not happen yet a name true, is generally indicated like "hard" or "direct-to-disk" disk.

The musical representation

Since the computer, unlike the electronic music of studio, claims a specification of the data, and thus a writing, the inquiry of the musical mental mental representation is a changeless concern of the field. We will see two answers. The first exemplifies a measure a priori compositionnelle: that of Xenakis. The second, more than general, is the Midi standard.

Iannis Xenakis innovates with the designing of the UPIC (Unit Polyagogique Informatique of CEMAMu). Conceived in the center of the Seventies, this system rises naturally from the attack of the synthesis of the sound by this type-setter: within the squad which it had joined together, baptized initially Emamu (Team of Mathematics and Musical Automatic, 1966), and with the funding of the Foundation Gulbenkian, Xenakis had made construct a digital-to-analog converter of high quality. The UPIC stands for a complete environment of composition with, in result, the sound synthesis of the page of made up music. Become in 1971 CEMAMu (Center of Mathematics and Musical Automatic) because of the creative activity of a topographic point intended to shelter its research, the squad joined together around Xenakis conceives a system devising it possible to the type-setter to pull on a wide tabular array of designer of the "arcs time-height", by choosing for each discharge a temporal trajectory, a word form of wave, a nuance. The music thus is initially represented in graphical form. The programmes of the first UPIC are written for a minicomputer Solar 16/65, connected to two organic structures of magnetic tapes to hive away the programmes and the samples, a digital-to-analog converter, a cathode beam tubing devising it possible to post the word forms of waves, but also to pull these moving ridges using a graphical pencil. To hear the page which it have just drawn, the type-setter must wait until the computing machine finished to cipher all the samples; the coevals of the sound is ensured by a digital-to-analog converter of high quality. More recently, the UPIC was redrawn for microcomputer, and mathematical functions without delay.

To stand for the sound in the word form of a modifiable image, it is the end of the Phonograms program, designed at the university City Of Light 8 per Vincent Lesbros. With the mode of a sonograms, the programme stations the spectral analysis like a drawing, which can be modified; the new mental representation can then be synthesized, either by Midi, or in the form of a information data file of sound, or even transformed into Midi file.

The reproach often today is heard that the coevals of immature instrumentalists who near engineering through the environment created around the Midi criterion are not a satisfactory aware of not passed of musical data processing and its problems. But is to bury that, in a direction, the birth of the Midi criterion was done without true descent with the preceding phases of the field which one will call musical information processing. The phenomenon which stands for Midi is not at all a mishap of this field.

The Midi criterion was developed in 1983 to let the piloting of respective synthesists starting from one lone keyboard; the messages are transmitted in numerical format, according to a well defined protocol. With the origin, Midi is thus well based on instrumental gesturer control: it is a method to stand for not the sound, but the gesture of the instrumentalist who plays of a Midi instrument. In 1983 leaves of absence the first synthesist to have got an interface Midi, Prophet 600 of Sequential Circuits. What had not been defined, on the other hand, it is the success which this criterion was going quickly to gain, which today is used to inter-connect all of the machines of a studio of electronic music, and even the sets of visible lights of a scene.

Musical research

The work undertaken since 1956 by Lejaren Hiller for the composition of Illiac Suite for String Four Marks at the same clip the true birth of musical information processing and the anchoring of this field in the research, applied in this lawsuit to the automatic composition. The computing machine appeared then as a machine devising it possible to handle the complex continuances of trading operations which qualify the composition of ambitious musical works. This manner was going to be reinforced since 1958 by the Gallic type-setter Capital Of South Dakota Barbaud, who runs in City Of Light the Algorithmic Group in connexion with the company Bull-General Electric and gets his research of automatic composition; as of the followers year, the first algorithmic work of Barbaud was made up:

Unforeseeable inventions (Algorithm 1), with the coaction of Capital Of South Dakota Blanchard. The programme Musicomp Delaware Lejaren Hiller and Henry Martin Robert Baker, of the same time, conceived for the Illiac computing machine after the composition of the Illiac Continuation, making university of Prairie State one of the centres of musical information processing at that time. And when in 1962, Iannis Xenakis makes ST/10, 080262, work written thanks to the stochastic programme ST developed since 1958 on a computing machine IBM 7090, the composition using the computing machine comes in its aureate age. In the Netherlands, Gottfried Michael Koenig composes in 1964 the programme of composition Undertaking I (1964), followed soon of Undertaking two (1970). The composition computer-assisted rests on maths and the stochastic one, drawing largely from the resources of the procedures of Andrei Markov (Hiller, Barbaud, Xenakis, Chadabe, Manoury).

With the reaching of the micro-computers A new inclination develops: aid with the composition, then computer-aided design of composition (CAD). The programme demiurge, able to bring forth a whole composition the theoretical account of an environment of data-processing tools charged wins to cover with precise musical problems. Let us cite among the principal ones: HMSL (Hierarchical Music Language Specification, 1985) with Robert Mills College in California, Forms, created by Saint Francis Xavier Rodet, Draft and Patchwork, developed in Ircam under the urge of Jean-baptiste Barrier, Experiment in Musical Intelligence of Saint David Cope, at the university of Santa Cruz in California. These programmes are open: they duologue with the type-setter inch an synergistic way, and are connected to the existence of the Midi devices. Except for Meter and Jam Factory of Joel Chadabe and Saint David Zicarelli, they are structured by the usage of linguistic communications nonnumerical, resulting from the field of the unreal intelligence, such as as Forth, and especially Lisp, which explicates why they rest not on mathematics, as it was the lawsuit for the first coevals of composition computer-assisted, but on the formal linguistic communications and the generative grammars.

Real time: computing machine and instrumental universe

The Eighties see developing the usage of the computing machine in state of affairs in concert; thanks to the reaching of the numerical synthesists in existent time, or, more than generally, numerical processors of sound, and linguistic communications of control existent time, the statuses are mature to revisit this old surface of the music of the XXe century: electronic music on line (live electronic music). In the bulk of the cases, it is initially a inquiry of imagining a agency of connecting the computer science machine and its computing powerfulness to devices of synthesis or treatment of sound, with, if, possible, the interaction of musicians. Répons (1981), of Capital Of South Dakota Swell, by the integrating of the processes of treatment the authorship itself, showed in what the computing machine became an instrument, incorporate perfectly into the orchestra. Following this work work looks on the follow-up, side the computer, of the drama of the instrumentalist, operation known under the name of "follow-up of partition". Let us cite the parts of Roger Dannenberg in the automatic concomitant and the linguistic communications offering the statuses of the communicating computer-instrument, those of max Mathews, initially with the Groove system, then more than recently with its work on "Radio operator Drum" and the computer simulation of the perch of the head orchestrates itself, Glenn Miller Puckette with the Max. program.

This is why one was in improver interested to give to instruments of orchestra this capacity, by providing them with sensors, allowing the computing machine to follow the executing (flute, vibraphone, etc…). All musical industry is concerned with this tendency, although the procedure to be used is not decided yet: it will be electromechanical (material detectors placed at strategical topographic points of the instrument, conducting membranes, etc…), Oregon will it be necessary to have got resort to the analysis for purloined of the sounds themselves to cognize of it the height, the spectral construction and the manner of play?

The community organizes itself

The ripening of musical information processing was accompanied by an premise of duty by the community by the instrumentalists and research workers by themselves. Gradually, the scruples of rank of a field is done day. The international Congresses appear, followed later local conferences. The communication theory which are marked there are published in aggregations available for all the community. These meetings also give topographic point to the presentation in concerts, which be givens more than strongly to dyer's rocket between them the scruples of a new field, with the scientific and artistic components. It is the beginning of the "International Computer Music Conferences" (ICMC). In 1978 is born an organisation intended to ease the communicating and to assist the behaviour of the congresses, the "Computer Music Association", which goes in 1991 "International Computer Music Association" (ICMA). The organisers seek to throw the Congress 1 twelvemonth in North America, and the followers twelvemonth on another continent. These Congresses see the ICMA pickings a function growing in the aid brought to the local organizers, like in the diffusion of the publications resulting from these meetings, going until placing from the orders of plant which will be carried out during ICMC (ICMA Committee Awards, 1991).

Another vehicle which dyer's rockets the scruples of rank of a common field is the Computer Music Journal. Appeared in Golden State in 1977, it is taken again by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press starting from volume 4 (1980). The newspaper is indispensable like the mention as sees scientific publications of the field. Association ICMA prints a bulletin, Array, which became a organic structure very appreciated of information and treatment on the current subjects of musical information processing. The reappraisal Interface Dutchwoman, which goes since 1994 Newspaper of New Music Research, regularly prints articles on musical information processing. Canada, Musicworks, guided by Gayle Young, guarantees information on a wide scope of concerns of the new musics. In France, publications of Ircam, InHarmonique, then the books of Ircam unfastened their columns with the aesthetic, theoretical and critical considerations which attach to sudden visual aspect by new engineerings in arts. In 1991 the Leonardo Da Vinci Da Vinci newspaper, published by the international association for arts, scientific discipline and technology, founded in 1968 by Frank Malina, lance, under the way of Roger Malina, Leonardo Music Journal, who convey a full vision of the musical pattern related to new technologies, thanks also to the publication, with each number, of a compact disk. More theoretical, the reappraisal Languages of Design, under the way of Raymond Lauzzana, is interested in formalisation in the artistic procedures, and grants a wide topographic point to musical information processing. With these traditional supports of information the direct communicating between instrumentalists and research workers by the agency of the data-processing webs is added, allowing the instantaneous email. Lastly, the demand to increase the velocity of communicating gave birth to the electronic newspapers, diffused by the webs such as as Internet; released from the construction of manufacture, feeling and routing, they let the same type of entree to information as the information Banks which, they also, multiply in musical information processing.